


Pretty Season

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2011-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the winter of his free agency, Zito follows Harden home because he really has no better ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretty Season

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted December 2006.

Pretty Season  
By Candle Beck

 

After the season is over, Zito sort of follows Harden home.

He takes Harden to the airport and parks in the long-term lot, and Harden thinks that’s weird, but of course, Zito’s pretty weird, so, okay. It’s already seventy degrees outside, the trees nonchalantly losing leaves, nothing serious or sudden like how Harden thinks it should be. They’re two days out of Detroit, fucking Detroit.

Zito says, “Have a drink with me,” and pulls Harden into the crummy little airport bar outside security. Harden’s stool has a short leg, and he tips back and forth, waiting for the bartender to return his ID, hoping he won’t get recognized.

Eight-fifteen in the morning, and Zito orders them Southern Comforts and ginger ale backs. Harden got maybe two hours of sleep, bleary and sticky-haired. Christmas music rains muffled from above, which can’t be right, it’s not even Halloween.

Harden rests his feet on the stack of his luggage and puts his head in his hand, leaning on his elbow. Zito is gnawing on his thumbnail, watching a morning chat show on the television over the bar. When their drinks come, Zito bolts his like there’s a secret chipped into the bottom of the glass, double-fisting the ginger ale right behind, and orders another.

Harden tries to think of something to say, arrives back at the game they’ve been playing for the past few months, what will you buy me when you’re rich. It’s stupid. Zito doesn’t even seem to like it that much, his mouth shrinking to a track, his thumbs rattling nervously, but he always goes along with them.

“I want Micronesia,” Harden says. Zito flinches, glancing over at him, then grins, startling and sharp.

“You just want the deed, or do you want me to pay the people to leave, too?”

“Nah, the people can stay. But I get a private beach. And diplomatic immunity.”

Zito smirks and lifts his second drink. The shadow of his hand falls across his face, the white fluorescents of the terminal refracting through the glass and cutting blocky holes of amber light on Zito’s fingers and cheek.

“If you own the island, I don’t think you’ll need diplomatic immunity.”

Harden folds his arms on the bar and lowers his head onto them, yawning. They’d both spent the night in Huston Street’s old room, because it was all the way at the end of the hall, two closets and a bathroom away from the others. Harden remembers lying on top of the covers, talking to Zito on the floor until he fell asleep, woke up to Zito shaking him, his forearm shoved into the pillowcase and Zito saying his name softly.

“It’s a whole bunch of islands, I think,” Harden tries to say, but it’s mostly lost.

He’s dozing, waiting for the bartender to come and tell him to sit the fuck up, and Zito’s hand ghosts over his hair. Harden jerks, snaps up. His back hollers, and he stares at Zito for a second, thinking that he doesn’t recognize him, but that’s not right. Zito is a strange constant, like the three hours it will take to fly to Vancouver, and the push of blood on the insides of Harden’s wrists, pressed down on the lip of the bar with his hands in fists.

Zito smiles kinda shakily and mumbles something as he gets up, leaves his third drink half-empty on the bar.

He’s gone long enough that Harden starts to worry, finishing his drink and finishing Zito’s, ginger ale burning his mouth, his soft head clouding even more. Trying to remember what they’d talked about all night, he gets stuck on Zito’s upturned face looking earnest and clean in the table light, his legs crossed Indian-style. The last thing Harden remembers Zito saying is, “If it was summer, the sun would be up already.”

There’s not much between them, Harden thinks, wondering if Zito has left him here in the airport bar. Zito’s never been too good at saying good-bye. Three and a half seasons as teammates, and in a month or two or three, they won’t even be that anymore. If Zito is really gone, then something has ended here, without being marked, without either of them saying anything.

Harden doesn’t want to leave things like that, he realizes suddenly.

He stumbles up, pushing some wrinkled money across the bar, and falls out into the terminal. The floor seems unnaturally slick, and the sun blasts through the windows, neatly locating the narrow strip between the ceiling and the ranks of cars in the parking lot. Harden’s vision goes white, and he won’t be able to find Zito like this, his mind ringing and the space under his ribs aching.

But then Zito comes fading out of the white like a ghost consigned to a particular stretch of highway, puts his hand on Harden’s shoulder and asks, “What are you doing? Where’s your stuff?”

Harden knows it’s him, though Zito is mostly a shadow as his eyes adjust. Embarrassed, he drops his head and shrugs. Zito hesitates before saying, “Well, okay. We should go.”

They get Harden’s stuff from the bar and Zito hooks one of the bags over his shoulder, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth. Harden is weak on his feet, bumping into people and saying excuse me, sorry, over and over again.

The security checkpoint is a maze that’s been stretched out horizontally. It’s mostly crowded with people in suits, talking on cellphones and toeing off their shoes. Harden stops short, glancing at Zito and looking for some kind of sign.

“So. Thanks,” Harden says. “For coming out with me, I mean.”

Zito nods, his eyes tracking the movements of the security guards like he’s casing the joint. “Not a problem.”

Harden hitches his bag higher on his shoulder and gets angry, hot and bitter behind his eyes, thinking that they should have done this last night. They had _hours_ to figure out what they wanted to say to each other, they didn’t have to leave it to the last goddamned minute.

“Listen,” Harden says, and he’s got no idea where he’s going with that. Zito does unexpected things to him, an ache in his stomach like laughing too long, sneakers without laces, cereal bowls floating like satellites in the swimming pool, the two of them in a big empty cracker-box house, waiting to go to the ballpark.

“Come on.” Zito takes a plane ticket out of his pocket, sticks it between his teeth as he gets his ID out of his wallet. “We’re gonna be late.”

Sock-footed in line for the X-ray, Harden can’t stop laughing, calling Zito crazy like if he says it often enough, it’ll come true. He’s almost hysterical with relief, but he doesn’t dwell on it.

Zito keeps shrugging, saying, “Whatever.”

On the plane, Zito is wired, asking the flight attendant for Cokes, jostling his knee into Harden’s. Harden slumps against the window, wanting to get some sleep and think about all this for a minute, but the armrest won’t go up and it digs painfully into his side. Zito is filling in the airline magazine’s crossword with answers of his own invention, chewing on the pen cap.

“A private jet,” Harden mumbles, his eyes sore. He squints at Zito, pale lavender light through the seam of the window.

Zito nods, not looking at him. “Done.”

“A really nice one. With a full bar. And a bed. And a Playstation.”

“Flying hotel room. Got it.”

Harden shakes his head, his shoulders drawn up, the slick sticky vinyl of first class rubbing on the back of his arms. “I hate hotel rooms, which you well know. I want my bedroom fitted with wings, okay?”

Smirking, Zito smooths his thumb over his eyebrow, his face angled down. Harden considers running the backs of his fingers down the line of Zito’s neck, thinking about the crane of Zito’s neck in his hand the night that they won the division, Zito turning because Street had called to him, champagne hot in Harden’s eyes and his shirt soaked through his jersey and undershirt to his skin.

“Why are you coming with me?” Harden asks.

Zito answers immediately; clearly, he’s been waiting for Harden to ask.

“I was bored.”

“We’ve only been back two days.”

“So?”

Harden opens his mouth, then closes it again. He sucks on his teeth, not trusting Zito, the airplane humming against his shoulder.

“Okay,” Harden says, and shuts his eyes. “Canada it is, then.”

For better than a week now, since they’d gone to Detroit, Harden has seen Zito first thing in the morning. There was a connecting door in the hotel, two of them, actually, with maybe three inches of space between, and they’d kept them chocked open on the deadbolts. Harden woke up to the tinny muted sound of Zito turning on the television, half an hour before the alarm. He got up, thready pajama pants and plain white T-shirt, and went through the two doors, crawled under the covers at the foot of Zito’s bed. Zito would be sitting cross-legged against the headboard, destroyed brown hair and his face fuzzy because Harden hadn’t put in his contacts yet, and he would maybe say hey or maybe just toss a pillow down to Harden. There was a crack between the curtains and the line of sunlight fell between them, right across the crumpled sheets.

Harden would sleep fitfully, listening to Zito crunch cereal and the rhythm of the television as he flipped through the channels. He had dreams about falling that worried him. All curled up, Zito kicked at Harden’s shoulder when it was time to go.

When they got back to Oakland, Zito was too messed up to even make it across the bridge, and he slept on the floor of Street’s old room, and Harden slept in Street’s old bed. During the day, the sky looked trapped under glass, and they went to the arcade, bought remote-controlled airplanes and crashed one into Lake Merritt and the other into a tree, and made pasta, steam curling Zito’s hair, the skin over his collarbone flushed red and soft. It didn’t seem that strange at the time, but maybe it does now.

Harden wakes up to Zito pulling on his ear. His back hurts so bad he almost cries, biting his lip. Zito skims his fingers across Harden’s cheek and says, “Seats and tray tables to their full upright position, please.”

Groaning a little bit, Harden pushes Zito’s coat off his shoulder and sits up. Zito looks at him sympathetically, the angles of his face softened and the fresh dark smell of bourbon filling the space between them.

“That’s not good for your back. You should wait until I get you your plane.”

Harden grits his teeth, swipes the heel of his hand across his mouth. Zito has never been hurt, not once, which is kinda stunning, if you really think about it. Harden thinks about Mark Mulder for a second, how Mulder seemed to fall off the face of the planet this season, like two years out of Oakland was all his body could stand.

Vancouver shines, wet and gray. Harden takes a deep breath, standing in a puddle on the tarmac, feels the little icicles snap into his lungs. Beside him, Zito is coughing, shivering in his thin coat. They get coffee at a kiosk inside and Harden scalds his tongue so badly that he won’t be able to taste anything for hours.

It’s not until they’re waiting for the siren light on the baggage carousel to go off that Harden realizes that Zito came up here, quite literally, with nothing but the clothes on his back. They’re sitting on the edge of the other carousel, Harden leaning on Zito a little bit.

“Hey.”

Zito starts a little, his hand jerking on his knee. “What.”

“You don’t have any clothes.”

“That’s true.” Zito nods thoughtfully. “I knew there was a flaw in this plan.”

Harden smiles against Zito’s arm, tired and happy to be in his quiet rainy country again. “That little coat of yours? And aren’t those shoes the ones with holes? You’re in trouble.”

“As if that’s unusual.”

“This was.” Harden stops, and straightens so that he’s not touching Zito anymore. He pictures clearly Zito’s road trip bags in the front hallway of his house, because Zito hasn’t left Harden’s side since Detroit. Zito’s eyes are trained on the conveyor, watching for Harden’s luggage with the red ribbons tied around the handles. “You really didn’t plan this at all, did you? It just happened?”

It might be better that way, if this is one of Zito’s ill-considered spurs of the moment. Zito has always had an impulse control problem, and maybe this is just a symptom of that, and not something bigger.

Zito shrugs, chewing on the paper edge of his coffee cup. “My plan was not to go home yet. So.”

“Huh.” Harden is staring at the side of Zito’s face, the brush of hair at his temples and the straight moving line of his jaw. He makes a command decision to stop questioning and just go with it.

They get out to Victoria and the sun is already starting to go down. Zito is kinda spooked, huddling against the door of the rental car like a hostage, watching out the window as the ocean builds, a hard dark gray, chopped all to hell.

Harden points out various landmarks, that’s the park where I got the scar on my knee, that’s where the kids used to go to smoke out and fuck around, that wall’s got my name carved into it, that tree used to have a bicycle in it. Zito is barely even conscious, nodding by rote. Tightening his hands on the wheel, Harden feels incredibly dumb, like he got his heart broken without even realizing he was in love, something like that.

Zito livens up some when they get to Harden’s parents’ house, smirking when Harden pushes the door open because they never bother locking it, and he helps Harden take his stuff upstairs, then asks, “Where should I sleep?”

Harden runs his hand through his hair. “There’s a couch in the living room. But then my folks would be coming in and out all the time. Should still be an air mattress somewhere.”

“Air mattress. Definitely. Will it fit in here?”

They both regard the floor. Harden shrugs.

“If you don’t mind me stepping on your head in the morning.”

Zito grins, so big that it’s kinda painful, says it’s cool. Harden goes to get the air mattress, his thoughts complicated by the picture of Zito on the floor of his childhood bedroom, his long arm sprawled under Harden’s bed. When he comes back upstairs, Zito is asleep in his bed.

Shaking his head, Harden pulls Zito’s holey sneakers off and lines them up by the door. Zito pushes his face into the pillow and his shoulder rolls towards Harden. He’s still wearing his coat, but Harden can see a rash of goosebumps on his forearm where the sleeve is pushed up. Harden throws a blanket over him, leaves the bundle of the air mattress and motor under the desk, and goes downstairs to make coffee, wondering how he’s gonna explain Zito to his parents.

He spends all afternoon at the kitchen table, drinking coffee until his vision blurs, reading every part of the paper but the sports section.

It’s not hard, in the end. Harden’s dad gets home first and is happy enough to see him that Harden can sneak in, “One of my teammates is gonna stay for a little while, he’s taking a nap right now,” without it being a big deal. By the way his dad asks after Zito’s back and ankle, Harden can tell that he’s getting Zito confused with Bobby Crosby, and it seems like way too much trouble to correct him.

Harden and his dad make dinner, talking about anything except baseball. It’s the same as it was last year and the year before, this dull bastard pain in the back of his throat, the palms of his hands. Harden thinks about Zito having lived through this seven years straight, so maybe it’s okay that Zito has been half-drunk all day.

His mom comes home and kisses his cheeks raw, and his dad asks if he wants to wake up his friend for dinner, and Harden says, “No, it’s okay. He should sleep.” He doesn’t miss the look that passes between his parents, an inarticulate burst of teenage frustration shooting through him, because they don’t know him that well anymore and they shouldn’t pretend otherwise. He bites his tongue, sets the table.

After dinner, and a hockey game on TV, his parents go to sleep, telling him it’s so good that he’s home. Harden sits in the living room for awhile, comfortable in the television blue light, but the station goes off air sometime after midnight, and he doesn’t like the implications of sitting in a dark silent room alone, three days into the off-season.

Zito’s still asleep, and not even the throttle and hum of the air mattress motor stir him. Harden crawls around, getting the sheets pulled on, watching Zito’s big pale hand twitch over the side of the bed. Harden wonders idly what would happen if he climbed into bed with Zito, folded into Zito’s back and hung his arm over to cross Zito’s at the wrist, limp fingers like flags.

Instead, he lies down on the air mattress, hearing it hiss and squeak beneath him, and thinks that this day started all the way back in the Oakland hills, in Street’s old room, with Zito talking about sunrise.

Zito sleeps for almost twenty hours, making Harden suspect that he’d been up since Detroit. Harden sets up his laptop and unpacks, carefully walking across the chaotic terrain of the air mattress. Zito can sleep through pretty much anything, his mouth cocked open and one hand in a loose fist near his eye, cheek rubbed smooth.

They have breakfast at one in the afternoon, and go out shopping, after Zito tries on one of Harden’s coats and the sleeves come down two inches above the knobby bones of his wrist.

“This isn’t going to work,” Zito remarks, lifting his arms to make the sleeves pull up even more. He’s stretching out the shoulders too, and Harden scowls at him.

“Take it off, then.”

“Woo.” Zito grins, hikes an eyebrow. He’s much more awake today, his forehead clear, and correspondingly more irritating. “Gotta buy me dinner first, baby.”

Harden feels his face get hot, and he stands to help Zito struggle out of the coat without ripping a seam. Zito’s shoulders move like water under his hands, the skin of his arms tight and warm against the backs of Harden’s fingers. Zito glances back at him, just a guy who’s been wearing the same shirt for three days, his expression traveled and resigned, his hair still damp from the shower.

At the department store, Harden camps in one of the chairs outside the changing rooms, watching CNN on the thoughtfully provided flat-screen. Zito comes and goes with a pretty salesgirl on his heels, recommending shirts in primary colors and jackets with useless buttons on the cuffs. Zito keeps coming out to show Harden what he’s tried on, until Harden tells him, “Seriously, I could not for the life of me care less,” and Zito makes a face and mutters something unkind, disappearing back inside.

The salesgirl is loitering around by the rack of reject clothes, and she looks at him with a small smile.

“He’s very cute.”

Harden blinks, looks at the television, thinking she might be talking about Anderson Cooper or something. He looks back at her, his eyes getting wide.

“Oh, um.”

She’ll ask him for Zito’s number, Harden thinks, his stomach closing up like a fist. Harden’s a good wingman, he can tell her that Zito doesn’t live in Canada but has nothing against extremely short-term relationships, and Zito will smile after with his mouth still lip-gloss shiny, and buy him a drink.

“You’re lucky,” she says instead, sighing a little bit. Harden’s intensely confused for a minute, trying to work out how her hitting on Zito makes _him_ lucky, and then he puts the pieces together and almost swallows his tongue.

“Yeah,” he says with his voice slightly choked, pushing one hand in the space between his leg and the seat, crossing his fingers. “I know.”

Zito buys enough clothes that Harden wants to ask exactly how long he’s planning on staying, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t carry any of the bags, either, because he’s not like that, trails a half-step behind Zito with his hands in his pockets, noticing how Zito walks.

The sky lowers over them, thick as mattress stuffing and packed with rain. Harden watches it distrustfully. It was overcast in Oakland too, and a couple days in Detroit. He can’t decide which of the two of them is bringing the weather with him, but he wishes it would leave them alone. He wants to take Zito to the park and see if the skateboard ramps he built with his friends when they were fourteen are still there.

They hole up inside for the rest of the day, watching movies taped off free HBO preview weekends a decade ago. Zito’s shirt still has the tags, hanging out of the sleeve. Harden watches Zito’s hand fidgeting on his knee, knowing that Zito has calluses on his fingertips and the side of his thumb, a vampire-bite pair of scars on the heel of his hand.

Zito meets his parents and turns on his charm like a light switch, at once brighter and more attentive, the contrast making it difficult for Harden to look at him. He hasn’t really appreciated that Zito has been more withdrawn than usual, quieter and stiller, but he can see now that Zito is fighting something hard, the shade of his eyes darkened, bird-scared.

That night, Harden presses his face into the pillow, dim remnant of Zito’s shampoo that’s probably only his imagination. Rain batters at the window, and Harden doesn’t think he’ll sleep much tonight.

“Richie?”

Harden curls one hand under the pillow, clears his throat. “Yeah.”

Zito doesn’t say anything for a long minute, and Harden is kinda stunned to find himself thinking about rolling right off the bed, crashing onto Zito with dangerous elbows and a bitten lower lip, the protesting whump of the air mattress, the shock of Zito’s breath on his face.

“I’m sorry I didn’t ask if I could come.”

Harden rolls onto his back, staring up at the reflection of the rain on the white ceiling. He folds his hands on his stomach, uncomfortably hot. Zito is so clean and strange, his rough hands and sweet kid’s mouth shaped like fans and crescents, banging around in the hollow places of Harden’s mind.

“Dude, you know you’re always welcome.”

Zito sighs. “It’s your off-season too. I don’t mean to get you all, like. Involved.”

“Involved in what?”

Zito doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to, because everyone knows that Zito will not play in Oakland next year. Harden has heard Zito’s cell phone vibrating when it’s quiet, but Zito doesn’t pick up and he hasn’t listened to his messages unless he’s done it in the bathroom. They’ve been together for pretty much every waking moment.

“Well,” Harden says. “You can make it up to me. You can buy me. Hmm. The stick Wayne Gretzsky was playing with when he broke Howe’s points record.”

Dumb thing to say, he thinks immediately, as Zito stays quiet. Zito hates this game. Harden fists his hands, his nails digging into his palms. He’s so fucking stupid.

“I mean, never mind,” Harden says helplessly. “You can stay for as long as you want, you don’t have to pay me back. This, we can call it even, okay?”

Still silent down there on the floor, and Harden blinks hard at the rain, his throat feeling sugar-clogged. Then Zito’s hand comes crawling up the side of the bed and feels around blindly, alights on Harden’s wrist. Zito taps out a short rhythm, and Harden is holding his breath.

“I didn’t want the whole winter to be about this one thing,” Zito tells him. “You’re a good distraction.” His hand retreats, slithering off the bed.

Harden lies awake for a long time after that, listening to Zito’s breath even out and deepen. He has this terrible feeling, his ribs cracking like glass, his wrist cold around the flashpoint burns of Zito’s fingerprints.

They fall into a routine as easy as slumping onto the clubhouse couch with half the team on the floor around them, watching Rob and Big on MTV after a game, Cokes instead of beers once Loazia got in trouble with the law and Beane overreacted. Harden can almost feel Street’s head brushing his knee, Zito blinking slow and snickering, jumping sideways into the guys in the parking garage.

Harden knows that what he and Zito do together in Victoria has nothing to do with what happened to the team this year, but it’s not really his fault that his mind draws the same kind of conclusions.

They wake up late in the morning, Harden stretching under the covers, his back cracking. Zito sleeps deeply, his eyelids dancing. Harden rolls around for an hour or so, until he hears Zito stir awake, and he peeks over the edge of the mattress like a cliff, seeing Zito’s mouth move and his forehead line. His dreams linger for a long time, flight and islands and disease, needles sliding under his skin, some magic cure.

There’s Bisquick for pancakes and the cereal they bought yesterday, and Zito hangs a spoon out of his mouth, methodically solving the sudoku puzzles in the newspaper. Harden is worsening his addiction to caffeine, licking the edge of a coffee mug with his high school’s blue charging cougar on it.

They circumnavigate the island, parking twenty miles up the coast and walking the beach trails, Zito huddled down in his new coat and his stiff gloves. Sea salt and mist ice into Zito’s hair and turn it white at the ends, making him look older. Between their disparate and shared histories, they have a lot to talk about. Baseball comes up on the periphery, and they turn away from it, backs to the wind.

In the early evening, they sometimes see a movie, an empty seat between them, piled with their coats. Harden gets used to the way Zito lays his long fingers down on his cheek when he’s paying attention, his profile staggered with light.

Dinner and TV and a half-finished game of Monopoly on the card table in the living room, and Zito keeps saying they should play with real money.

Zito’s phone dies after a couple of days, and he spends an afternoon calling most of the people he knows, giving them Rich Harden’s cell phone number as the best way to reach him. He hasn’t really run away, Harden thinks, because it’s the work of ten minutes to figure out where the 250 prefix comes from.

The phone rings for Zito a lot, at weird hours. If the internet is to be believed, Zito’s agent is in Japan, and Harden calculates time zones as Zito’s face draws and sets. He goes into the pantry to take the calls, and Harden finds him there sometimes an hour or two later, sitting on the floor with the phone on his knee, his face blank. Once, Harden hears him saying, “Just get it done, Scott, that’s what I’m fucking paying you for,” and he doesn’t know why Zito’s in such a hurry to move past the in-between.

Harden’s parents seem mostly bemused by Zito’s presence in their lives, but they’re willing to adapt. They don’t ask too many questions. Harden is right there with them.

Harden is remotely aware that he’s becoming accustomed to Zito in ways that will be hard to overcome. Zito comes out of the shower without a shirt on and he stays like that for hours at a time, like he just forgot, like a kid in summer. Harden likes to pretend that he can see Zito’s skin getting paler and the scar on his ribs disappearing, but in the fresh light of day, he knows it’s just wishful thinking.

The window in his bedroom hasn’t opened since he was thirteen, and lying awake, Harden imagines the stifling warm air through the vents, cycling through Zito’s lungs and into his own, carrying bits and pieces of them to each other. It’s just routine, he thinks, and quickly puts it out of his mind.

Zito asks where Harden and his friends hung out when they were kids, and past midnight, in the drifting rain, Harden takes him to the miniature golf course, which closes early because of the season. Zito gives him a hand up the chainlink fence, and tosses Harden the backpack, clanking full of beer cans, before climbing over himself.

Dark like the inside of a mouth, clown’s faces and pirate ships and alligators with their jaws stuck open, rain gathering lightly on the slippery green. Harden tells his stories about when he and his friends would leave their bikes on the other side of the fence and cut their hands as they climbed. The miniature golf course is set off the highway, no guards because there isn’t anything to steal, and Harden is oddly moved to find his initials still written in permanent ink on the back of the clown head, clustered with his friends’.

Zito stands in the shadow of the windmill, breath pouring white out of his mouth, rain shining to his hair, and says, “It’s quiet out here.”

Harden isn’t really listening, kneeling. “We didn’t usually come out here when it was this cold. Mostly just the summertime. If you climb on top of the T-rex over there, you can almost see the ocean.”

Zito looks down at him, Harden’s gloved hands digging in the hole, as he has in every one they’ve passed so far. Seven years ago, he’d flicked a Molson bottle cap into a hole from twenty feet out, an unbroken record, and there’s no chance the cap is still down here, but he’s looking anyway. He just can’t remember which hole it was; all he remembers is dancing around in celebration and tripping over the little manmade creek, soaking his jeans and the right arm of his jacket.

Zito takes his hand out of his pocket and cups Harden’s cheek, and Harden barely feels it, his skin feeling like wood.

He snaps his eyes up, blinking fast, but Zito’s hard to make out through the rain, and a moment later, he’s stepping away again, leaving Harden buried up to his wrists and speechless.

Zito does this kind of stuff a lot, touching Harden like it means something. Harden’s got to stop being so surprised by it.

They go back most nights, walking the short courses, drinking under a black and white sky.

After a few weeks of this, Danny Haren calls. Harden’s been expecting it, though it could have been Eric Chavez or even Mark Mulder, who likes to imagine he still has a say in things that happen in Oakland, just as easy, and he steps out onto the back porch without shoes on, the cement immediate and freezing.

“Hey, Dan.”

“Rich.”

“Yes.”

“Dude.”

Harden sighs, reading the accusation in Haren’s voice. “Okay. He’s here.”

“I know. Everybody knows.” There’s a rush of wind behind what Danny’s saying; he must be driving.

“We weren’t, like, trying to keep it a secret.” He hasn’t run away, Harden wants to say. He’s too easily found to be hiding.

“Right. You know, you shouldn’t be encouraging him.”

Harden puts his fist up against the side of the house, his knuckles white on the aluminum siding. “Encouraging him to do what?”

“Whatever. Whatever you’re doing up there. It’s not healthy.”

Swiftly, Harden gets pissed off. Danny doesn’t know. This year, Harden officially passed the point where he’s spent more time on the disabled list than in the rotation. In a matter of weeks, days, _hours_ , Zito will sign with the New York Mets for an obscene amount of money just like everyone knows he will, vanish across the country like a retreating train whistle. And maybe three weeks ago, they got swept for the pennant. This is not a good time to be emotionally stable.

“You think him being out here is gonna change anything?” Harden asks, letting his tone sneer unapologetically.

Danny sighs into the receiver. “No. But I think you might lose sight of that.”

Harden angles forward slowly, flattens his hand and rests his forehead on the back of it, feeling the tendons give and the cold sink through his palm, crawl up his arm. He closes his eyes, thinking again and again that Danny doesn’t know.

Annoyed beyond belief with his teammates, Harden seeks out Zito and finds him at the kitchen table, pitching American pennies into a baseball cap on the floor. The coins bounce and ring off the linoleum, tire-rolling under the refrigerator, and Harden rubs his hands together fast, asks stupidly:

“What are you doing?”

Zito rolls his eyes on a slant, what the fuck does it look like I’m doing, and chucks a penny at his head. Harden ducks out of the way, shifting from one numb foot to the other. He wants to go over and take hold of Zito’s shoulders and lean down and kiss him, figure out if Zito’s been biting his nails, if the inside of his mouth will taste like copper. He realizes this helplessly, bunching his fists, his joints cracking.

“Look,” Harden says, fucked up something awful. Zito tips his head to the side and glances at him at a perfect angle. Harden digs his nails in, cuts his teeth into his lip. “You can’t just-”

“Don’t,” Zito says quickly, a flash like fear through his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

About _what_ , Harden wants to scream, because he hates this, honestly he does.

“Fine,” he says instead, dumb and hungry, fighting the idea with all the poor strength he’s got left.

Zito smiles kinda desperately, grateful, and when he throws another penny, Harden catches it right out of the air.

At the miniature golf course a couple of nights later, Zito’s new sneakers shine bright fire-engine red, jammed in the fence, the snow not quite laces-deep and still falling, already disappearing. “It never really sticks,” Harden explains, holding onto Zito’s arm as his feet go out from under him. Zito nods speculatively, his fingers wrapped around Harden’s wrist.

Harden passes him beers from out of the backpack, hoping that if he gets Zito drunk enough, Zito will answer his questions or recognize what it means when Harden stares at him. Very little makes sense to him these days, but that’s just this halfway life, nothing to worry about.

The fourteenth hole is King Kong, a black hole cored through the back of his throat, and the red lights of his eyes have been left on by mistake. Zito is drawn, moth-like, and Harden follows a step or two behind, wet-green shoeprints left in the turf. Pressing his hand over one eye, red light bleeds out around Zito’s palm, and he looks back at Harden, smiling.

Something gives. Harden grabs him by the front of his coat.

“Hey,” Zito says, surprised, his mouth circling, his hand sliding off the monkey’s big eye.

Harden is off-balance, his throat jammed by Zito’s red-washed face, the squeak of their feet on the fake grass.

“I’m sorry,” he says immediately, but doesn’t let Zito go. He likes the feel of his knuckles dragging into Zito’s chest, the wind tearing at the tight skin of his hands.

Zito’s softly confused. “It’s okay.”

Jerking his head to the side, Harden bites his lip, staring at Zito’s mouth. “It’s not. I’m not cut out for this. Just. Why are you _here_?”

Zito’s expression closes up, sneering as he tries to pull away, but Harden is stronger than him in almost every way that matters. Showing his teeth, Zito fits his hands into the crooks of Harden’s arms, bearing down.

“If you want me to leave, Richie, just fucking say so.”

And Harden’s shaking his head, pulling him in, whispering against Zito’s mouth, “Don’t leave,” over and over again.

He kisses Zito, pressing him back against the monkey’s face. He licks until Zito lets him in, tips his head and opens his mouth and Harden slides his hands up to Zito’s face, checking with his thumbs to make sure that Zito’s eyes are closed. Zito’s eyelids move like he’s dreaming, and under the quick white cover of this long winter, Harden can feel snow melting around his feet.

They break apart suddenly, breathing hard. Harden’s vision fogs; he can’t make out Zito’s face. His chest feels like it’s about to explode, his mouth on fire. He swipes a hand across his eyes and Zito is staring at him, red light touching his hair.

“Rich-”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Harden says without thinking, and then kinda laughs. “You owe me one of those.”

After a long moment, Zito nods. They walk back to the fence in silence, Harden tasting Molson and the green apple Zito ate on the drive over, compulsively running his tongue over the roof of his mouth and the back of his teeth, until there’s nothing left of it.

The chainlink makes Harden feel like he’s escaping something, and he casts a slow look over his shoulder as he’s straddling the top, the thin scrim of white atop abandoned carnival shapes, the sleepy turn of the windmill, glowing red eyes.

It crowds into the car with them, letters written in the fog on the windshield. I kissed you, Harden keeps thinking, tightening his grip on the wheel, feeling the scrape of Zito’s zipper along the heel of his hand. You kissed me back.

Zito gazes out the window, his ear and a slash of his cheek visible in the streetlight. So goddamn cute, Harden thinks, panicked.

Harden goes down the hall to wake his parents up and let them know he’s got home safe, and Zito says uncertainly, “I’m just, can I borrow your phone please?” before disappearing into the pantry. Harden stands in the hallway, his eyes fixed on the runner of gold light from under the door, and then he goes upstairs, rubbing a fist on his chest.

In bed, Harden turns himself to face the wall, the sheet pulled up above his shoulder. A shaft of moonlight coats his curled hand, and he plays it over and over again in his mind, the tilt of Zito’s head, the dig of his fingers into the tender hollows of Harden’s elbows, hot like maybe they were more steam than anything else, and he wonders if Zito’s down there right now agreeing to the first deal that’s offered, anything to get himself out of Canada.

Harden presses his forehead against the wall, his fists under his chin. He hears Zito opening the door and the hush of the air mattress, Harden biting down on the inside of his lip.

He counts money in his head, to save himself from counting Zito’s breaths. He’ll sleep when he gets to a hundred million dollars, three generations set for life and anything that Harden wants, Zito will be able to give him. He’s thrown off terribly, skating on oil. A hundred million dollars, Jesus Christ.

“Rich?”

Harden goes perfectly still, staring at the wall.

“I know you’re awake, dude.”

Harden is not awake. Harden is dreaming of better things, falling to within inches of the pavement, lying on a beach somewhere in the South Pacific, watching Zito on the water. This will not be some doomed love affair; Harden won’t allow it.

The air mattress sighs and wheezes as Zito rises to his knees, and Harden feels his own mattress sink a little as Zito leans on it. He squeezes his eyes shut, gouging his nails into his palm.

“Richie, hey,” Zito says, and tugs the covers down, and places his mouth on Harden’s shoulder, a sear through his shirt.

Harden jerks, slamming his forehead into the wall, and rolls over so fast his equilibrium skews wildly. Zito’s arms and shoulders and face hover above the mattress, looking at him with fear in his eyes, his fresh-washed face gleaming.

“What are you doing?” Harden whispers, shaking. Zito shakes his head, pulling his lower lip between his teeth.

“I don’t know. I must have come up here for a reason and, I, I.”

“You think this might be it?” Harden offers, not certain whether he wants Zito to agree or not.

“I think it probably can’t hurt.” Zito smiles a little bit, and Harden thinks about hitting him, just once.

“Are you fucking insane?” he hisses instead. “What can it possibly do _but_ hurt?”

Zito shakes his head again, his face angled down so that the moonlight catches up on his cheekbones and the damp mess of his hair. He smells like snowfall and soap, some kind of actualized heartbreak put in motion by the off-season.

“You’ve always been good to me, Richie,” Zito tells him honestly.

And what have you been to me, Harden wants to ask, but he doesn’t get the chance. Zito leans forward and kisses Harden’s cheek, the corner of his mouth. Harden pushes up on his elbow and parts Zito’s lips with his tongue, his fingers alighting on the side of Zito’s face. Zito crawls into the little twin bed with him and rests his weight with one hand on Harden’s shoulder, grinning down at him with shadows crossing his face like swords, looking like disaster itself.

It’s such a bad idea.

There’s a tick like a metronome in Harden’s mind, as Zito sits up with his knees to either side of Harden’s body and strips off his shirt. The snow falling outside scatters dime-sized pieces of gray on Zito’s body, traveling downward, and on Harden’s hands when he puts them on Zito’s sides, runs them up the smooth skin over his ribs. He feels Zito’s hair stinging in his eyes when Zito kisses him again. Zito kisses him like he’s got nothing left to do in his life that’s not this, careful slow and deep. He spans his fingers on Harden’s stomach and Harden’s back bows, pressing himself up.

He has the awful suspicion that this right here, Zito on top of him in the faded raffling light through the window, Zito tugging down his collar and shaping his mouth over Harden’s collarbone, this is altering the chemicals in his brain, changing what it will take to make him happy, forever and ever, amen.

They fall asleep like kids, tangled up because the bed’s so small, there’s no other option. Harden’s face is between Zito’s shoulderblades, his hand on Zito’s hip. Such a pretty season, he thinks distantly, just before he loses consciousness.

When Harden wakes up, Zito’s sitting on the edge of the bed, his back neatly curved. Harden mumbles something and curls around so that his head bumps into Zito’s hip. He’s still mostly asleep, content in some weird way that will doubtless dissipate once his mind clears a bit more. Zito rests his hand on Harden’s hair, tapping his thumb thoughtfully.

“The thing is, we don’t really know what’s gonna happen,” Zito says after a minute.

Harden yawns, cotton rustling against his teeth. “That’s not true at all.”

“Yeah. Sounded good, though.”

Smiling, Harden presses his mouth to Zito’s hip through his boxer shorts.

“Have you done this before?”

“Which part?”

“Any of it, Richie.”

“Oh, you know.” Harden closes his teeth on Zito’s shorts, feeling the air on the exposed length of his spine. “I generally figure that if I was meant to be gay, I wouldn’t be a ballplayer.”

“Um. I don’t think that makes any sense.”

“Yeah, well. It’s early.”

Zito slips his hand through Harden’s hair a few times, and Harden almost falls back asleep. Big hands, he thinks foggily, maybe that’s why Zito hasn’t once missed a start, more than his motion or the way he rarely eats processed sugar. Zito’s hands are made for rings. In the background, Harden is aware of time already running out on them, though they’re barely off the ground. Something burns behind his shut eyes, because he knows exactly how this will end; they both do.

“Listen.” Zito nudges at Harden’s chin, and Harden hums against his fingers. “We’ve got until February.”

Harden bites his tongue, crosses his fingers. “You’re gonna stay until February?”

“I like it up here. The, um. The weather.”

Harden half-smiles. “Shut the fuck up.”

Zito covers Harden’s eyes with his hand, which is strange, Harden decides, and kinda peaceful, taking the burden of sightlessness off of him. “I like you, dude,” Zito whispers, his voice breaking.

Harden puts his hand over Zito’s, and kisses the underside of his wrist, soft and warm, blood under the skin. In the dark, Harden can believe in temporary things like money and Zito’s talent, and the idiot quiet when all the decisions are made for them.

“Yeah,” he says, and he’s fallen in love in the worst way, gone on a free agent. Harden hears Zito sigh, and he thinks blindly, keep the island, never go home.

THE END


End file.
